History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 / Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens

by George Washington Williams

This paper also declares that "the grounds were purchased at the special instance of Myrtilla Miner," and that "the contributions by which the original price of said lot, and also the cost of the subsequent improvements thereof, were procured chiefly by her instrumentality and labors." The idea of Miss Miner in planting a school here was to train up a class of Colored girls, in the midst of slave institutions, who should show forth in their culture and capabilities, to the country and to mankind, that the race was fit for something higher than the degradation which rested upon them. The amazing energy with which this frail woman prosecuted her work is well known to those who took knowledge of her career. She visited the Colored people of her district from house to house, and breathed a new life into them pertaining to the education of their daughters. Her correspondence with the philanthropic men and women of the North was immense. She importuned Congressmen, and the men who shaped public sentiment through the columns of the press, to come into her school and see her girls, and was ceaseless in her activities day and night, in every direction, to build up, in dignity and refinement, her seminary, and to force its merits upon public attention.

The buildings upon the lot when purchased—a small frame dwelling of two stories, not more than twenty-five by thirty-five feet in dimensions, with three small cabins on the other side of the premises—served for the seminary and the homes of the teacher and her assistant. The most aspiring and decently bred Colored girls of the district were gathered into the school; and the very best Colored teachers in the schools, of the district at the present time, are among those who owe their education to this self-sacrificing teacher and her school. Mrs. Means, aunt of the wife of General Pierce, then President of the United States, attracted by the enthusiasm of this wonderful person, often visited her in the midst of her work, with the kindest feelings; and the fact that the carriage from the Presidential mansion was in this way frequently seen at the door of this humble institution, did much to protect it from the hatred with which it was surrounded.

Mr. Seward and his family were very often seen at the school, both Mrs. Seward and her daughter Fanny being constant visitors; the latter, a young girl at the time, often spending a whole day there. Many other Congressmen of large and generous instincts, some of them of pro-slavery party relations, went out there, all confessing their admiration of the resolute woman and her school, and this kept evil men in abeyance.

The opposition to the school throughout the district was strong and very general, among the old as well as the young. Even Walter Lenox, who, as mayor, when the school was first started, gave the teacher assurances of favor in her work, came out in 1857, following the prevailing current of depraved public sentiment and feeding its tide, in an elaborate article in the "National Intelligencer," under his own signature; assailed the school in open and direct language, urging against it that it was raising the standard of education among the Colored population, and distinctly declaring that the white population of the district would not be just to themselves to permit the continuance of an institution which had the temerity to extend to the Colored people "a degree of instruction so far beyond their social and political condition, which condition must continue," the article goes on to say, "in this and every other slave-holding community." This article, though fraught with extreme ideas, and to the last degree prescriptive and inflammatory, neither stirred any open violence, nor deterred the courageous woman in the slightest degree from her work. When madmen went to her school-room threatening her with personal violence, she laughed them to shame; and when they threatened to burn her house, she told them that they could not stop her in that way, as another house, better than the old, would immediately rise from its ashes.

The house was set on fire in the spring of 1860, when Miss Miner was asleep in the second story, alone, in the night-time, but the smell of the smoke awakened her in time to save the building and herself from the flames, which were extinguished. The school-girls, also, were constantly at the mercy of coarse and insulting boys along the streets, who would often gather in gangs before the gate to pursue and terrify these inoffensive children, who were striving to gather wisdom and understanding in their little sanctuary. The police took no cognizance of such brutality in those days. But their dauntless teacher, uncompromising, conscientious, and self-possessed in her aggressive work, in no manner turned from her course by this persecution, was, on the other hand, stimulated thereby to higher vigilance and energy in her great undertaking. The course of instruction in the school was indeed of a higher order than had hitherto been opened to the Colored people of the district, as was denounced against the school by Walter Lenox, in his newspaper attack. Lectures upon scientific and literary subjects were given by professional and literary gentlemen, who were friends to the cause. The spacious grounds afforded to each pupil an ample space for a flower bed, which she was enjoined to cultivate with her own hands and to thoroughly study. And an excellent library, a collection of paintings and engravings, the leading magazines and choice newspapers, were gathered and secured for the humble home of learning, which was all the while filled with students, the most of whom were bright, ambitious girls, composing a female Colored school, which, in dignity and usefulness, has had no equal in the district since that day. It was her custom to gather in her vacations and journeys not only money, but every thing else that would be of use in her school, and in this way she not only collected books, but maps, globes, philosophical, and chemical, and mathematical apparatus, and a great variety of things to aid in her instruction in illustrating all branches of knowledge. This collection was stored in the school building during the war, and was damaged by neglect, plundered by soldiers, and what remains is not of much value. The elegant sofa-bedstead which she used during all her years in the seminary, and which would be an interesting possession for the seminary, was sold, with her other personal effects, to Dr. Carrie Brown (Mrs. Winslow), of Washington, one of her bosom friends, who stood at her pillow when she died.

Her plan embraced the erection of spacious structures, upon the site which had been most admirably chosen, complete in all their appointments for the full accommodation of a school of one hundred and fifty boarding scholars. The seminary was to be a female college, endowed with all the powers and professorships belonging to a first-class college for the other sex. She did not contemplate its springing up into such proportions, like a mushroom, in a single night, but it was her ambition that the institution should one day attain that rank. In the midst of her anxious, incessant labors, her physical system began so sensibly to fail, that in the summer of 1858, under the counsel of the friends of herself and her cause, she went North to seek health, and, as usual in all her journeys, to beg for her seminary, leaving her girls in the care of Emily Howland, a noble young woman, who came down here for the love of the cause, without money and without price, from the vicinity of Auburn, New York. In the autumn, Miss Miner returned to her school; Miss Howland still continuing with her through the winter, a companion in her trials, aiding her in her duties, and consenting to take charge of the school again in the summer of 1859, while Miss Miner was on another journey for funds and health. In the autumn of that year, after returning from her journey, which was not very successful she determined to suspend the school, and to go forth into the country with a most persistent appeal for money to erect a seminary building, as she had found it impossible to get a house of any character started with the means already in her hands. She could get no woman, whom she deemed fit to take her work, willing to continue her school, and in the spring of 1860, leasing the premises, she went North on her errand. In the ensuing year she traversed many States, but the shadow of the Rebellion was on her path, and she gathered neither much money nor much strength. The war came, and in October, 1862, hoping, but vainly, for health from a sea-voyage and from the Pacific climate, she sailed from New York to California. When about to return, in 1866, with vivacity of body and spirit, she was thrown from a carriage in a fearful manner; blighting all the high hopes of resuming her school under the glowing auspices she had anticipated, as she saw the Rebellion and the hated system tumbling to pieces. She arrived in New York, in August of that year, in a most shattered condition of body, though with the fullest confidence that she should speedily be well and at her work in Washington. In the first days of December she went to Washington in a dying condition, still resolute to resume her work; was carried to the residence of her tried friend, Mrs. Nancy M. Johnson; and on the tenth of that month, surrounded by the friends who had stood with her in other days, she put off her wasted and wearied body in the city which had witnessed her trials and her triumphs, and her remains slumber in Oak Hill Cemetery.

Her seminary engaged her thoughts to the last day of her life. She said in her last hours that she had come back here to resume her work, and could not leave it thus unfinished. No marble marks the resting-place of this truly wonderful woman, but her memory is certainly held precious in the hearts of her throngs of pupils, in the hearts of the Colored people of this district, and of all who took knowledge of her life, and who reverenced the cause in which she offered herself a willing sacrifice. Her assistants in the school were Helen Moore, of Washington; Margaret Clapp, Amanda Weaver, and Anna H. Searing, of New York State, and two of her pupils, Matilda Jones, of Washington, and Emma Brown, of Georgetown, both of whom subsequently, through the influence of Miss Miner and Miss Howland, finished their education at Oberlin, and have since been most superior teachers in Washington. Most of the assistant teachers from the North were from families connected with the Society of Friends, and it has been seen that the bulk of the money came from that society. The sketch would be incomplete without a special tribute to Lydia B. Mann, sister of Horace Mann, who came here in the fall of 1856, from the Colored Female Orphan Asylum of Providence, R. I., of which she was then, as she continues to be, the admirable superintendent, and, as a pure labor of love, took care of the school in the most superior manner through the autumn and winter, while Miss Miner was North recruiting her strength and pleading for contributions. It was no holiday duty to go into that school, live in that building, and work alone with head and hands, as was done by all those refined and educated women who stood from time to time in that humble, persecuted seminary. Miss Mann is gratefully remembered by her pupils here and their friends.

Mention should also be made of Emily Howland, who stood by Miss Miner in her darkest days, and whose whole heart was with her in all her work. She is a woman of the largest and most self-sacrificing purposes, who has been and still is giving her best years, all her powers, talents, learning, refinement, wealth, and personal toil, to the education and elevation of the Colored race. While here she adopted, and subsequently educated in the best manner, one of Miss Miner's pupils, and assisted several others of her smart girls in completing their education at Oberlin. During the war she was teaching contrabands in the hospital and the camp, and is now engaged in planting a colony of Colored people in Virginia with homes and a school-house of their own.

A seminary, such as was embraced in the plan of Miss Miner, is exceedingly demanded by the interest of Colored female education in the District of Columbia and the country at large, and any scheme by which the foundations that she laid so well may become the seat of such a school, would be heartily approved by all enlightened friends of the Colored race. The trustees of the Miner property, not insensible of their responsibilities, have been carefully watching for the moment when action on their part would seem to be justified. They have repeatedly met in regard to the matter, but, in their counsels, hitherto, have deemed it wise to wait further developments. They are now about to hold another meeting, it is understood, and it is to be devoutly hoped that some plan will be adopted by which a school of a high order may be, in due time, opened for Colored girls in this district, who exceedingly need the refining, womanly training of such a school.

The original corporators of Miss Miner's institution were Henry Addison, John C. Underwood, George C. Abbott, William H. Channing, Nancy M. Johnson, and Myrtilla Miner. The objects, as expressed in the charter, "are to educate and improve the moral and intellectual condition of such of the colored youth of the nation as may be placed under its care and influence."